Don't get your hopes up
Warning to fellow Americans: Putin and Russia are not giving up and going home anytime soon.
Putin acted aggressively and boldly. He screwed up.
He broke a rule for a great power. Now he cannot afford to lose.
The American news has a hopeful and happy tone. Ukraine is resisting Russia. Ukraine drones are shooting Russian tanks. We see video images of disabled Russian vehicles. Financial sanctions are working even before they are implemented. The ruble is down. The Russian stock market is closed. We hear rumors that wealthy Russian oligarchs are unhappy with Putin. Ukraine's President Zelensky looks like a hero. There are war protesters in Russia. Americans are waving blue and yellow flags. Republicans who had been praising Putin are backtracking. The underdog might win.
The news is looking great! We feel a thrill. Maybe we should feel dread, instead.
Great powers dare not lose fights. Their ability to avoid future fights require they not lose current ones. It is better for Putin to burrow in, commit more troops, and generally increase the intensity of fighting than to lose. Better to fight for a decade, if that is what is required, than to give up. He cannot lose face.
Americans old enough to remember the war in Vietnam remember face. We carelessly took over the French colonial mission in Vietnam and redefined it as a war to stop communist dominos. We committed. By the 1968 Tet Offensive there was no mistaking that the war was hopeless. Yet we continued fighting for another six years, with 500,000 troops at one point, over 40,000 dead, B-52 bombing raids, napalm drops, deforestation, and civil unrest at home. Why did we persist when it was hopeless? We could not lose face. Our war aim changed to being able to leave "with honor." Losing would mean that the USA was not an unstoppable steamroller of military power. The domino was no longer communism's spread. The domino was perception that the U.S. military could be defied.
Putin is stuck. As the Cold War matured a norm emerged. Nuclear powers would not threaten using those weapons for the offensive purpose of expanding their national boundaries. The norm served to keep the peace. Every nuclear power has the ability to cause immeasurable damage and then endure the same. Great powers must avoid head-to-head collisions, accomplished by using non-nuclear proxies.
Until this month, Putin played by the Cold War rules of the game. There have been Russian soldiers in the Donbas for a decade, but they were in unmarked uniforms and they pretended to be local freedom fighters encouraging independence for a potential breakaway region. It was a legal fiction. Now Putin has Russian troops, tanks, and missiles at war with Ukraine.
Putin cannot appear to lose. Russian solders cannot have died in vain.
Nor, of course, can Ukraine lose. Their soldiers and civilians have died for Ukraine independence. That cannot be in vain.
NATO cannot lose face. Otherwise dominos of Baltic states and Poland may fall, a repeat of 1938. That cannot be allowed.
The U.S. cannot lose face, either, but will. Biden will be criticized for weakness and appeasement whatever happens short of the immediate collapse of Russia and getting videotapes of Trump kneeling to Putin.
There will be no winners in Ukraine. The best possible outcome is not Ukraine victory. That would endanger the peace. The best outcome is that everyone loses just a little, but can live with the disappointment, while publicly pretending they are happy.
Don't cheer for a quick Ukraine victory. Cheer for a quick end to the fighting.
Disagree with your best possible outcome. Best possible outcome is that the Russian people oust Putin.